The Rebel Yell

While I was doing some other research, I came across this video from Smithsonian Magazine. It's a recording of Confederate veterans in the 1930s giving the old "Rebel Yell," as well as they still could at what was then an advanced age.

Historians have been arguing for some years about both the actual sound of the yell, and its origins. The most popular arguments are that the South had learned to use it from fighting the Indians, which is plausible because those wars immediately preceded the generation that fought the Civil War; or that it was native to the Southerners because it was derived from the Scottish Highlander war-cry. The latter argument is plausible because the Highlander yell is well-attested, and because of the prominence of Scots among Southern families -- although that prominence is greatest among the Appalachian Southerners, who were least likely to support the Confederacy.

10 comments:

Oh, there's more than one vid existing, Grim. The Louisiana Civil War Museum at Confederate Hall just off Lee Circle in New Orleans @929 Camp St. and oppo the D-Day/WWII museum across the street, has several. It's the second largest repository of memorabilia outside the one at Richmond. If you're ever in N.O. be sure to visit. It's a reddish-brown half-circular brick structure--very distinctive. The Camp St down-ramp from the x-way enters Camp St. just one block prior--takes you right there--bldg is on left.

I have never been to New Orleans, oddly enough given its cultural importance to the South. I keep meaning to go, but I've always wanted to do it right -- go up to Memphis, and take the steamboat down. So the real obstacle, I guess, is finding the money for the steamboat cruise!

I've talked to some folks who have qualified as living history, sadly not often enough in my life, even been related to a few, but this gives me shivers and a sense of profound loss. The things we will never remember right...

There is a lot of PC political intrigue to the current status of the museum. Pre-Katrina, when N.O was 70% black and totally controlled by blacks under Mayor Mark Morial (son of the city's first "black" mayor "Dutch" Morial(they didn't call him "Dutch" because he wore wooden shoes--N.O's "black" political class has always been dominated by the city's black/Creole pop.)major attempts large & small were made to rid or reduce the presence/memory of all things "Confederate" in N.O. (e.g., they turned off the flood-lights which lit the statue at night of General Lee atop the tall Greek column at Lee Circle) which culminated in an attempt to destroy/eliminate the Confederate museum. Conveniently a major real-estate and "progressive" patron of the arts multi-millionaire mover and shaker wanted (and did) build aan multi-story bldg next to the Confederate Museum. Citing the need for a) expansion room and b) the incongruity of housing his art collection--donated to UNO--next to such a "racist" and "retrograde" institution. He enlisted the aid of not only City Hall, but the "progressive" Admin at the Univ of N.O. (ain't they all) who (and memory is hazy here) either or both 1) owned the land on which the Museum sat and 2)had their legal hooks into the museum in terms of their being the administrator of the original grant from the pvt parties which established the Museum. The plan was to break-up the collection and parcel it out to various academic institutions and historical societies throughout the state where hopefully it would sink into academic oblivion in the basements of Univ libraries, etc., all being done under the guise of "allowing more people" "throughout the state" to view the stuff. Fortunately we had a Republican Gov (Mike Foster, a "good 'ole boy" rich businessman from rural La) at the time who exercised his considerable power (UNO is actually part of the LSU system plus the State had some direct ,iirc,, legal hooks in both the real-estate on which the Museum sat AND the original grant of power trust document) to publicly proclaim that not only would the State oppose any such move in court, he, personally would move the entire museum lock,stock and barrel to Baton Rouge and establish a new museum there. As a result the entire effort stalled and with the election of a new black "businessman" Mayor Ray Nagin (then championed by the white business community at the time waaayyy prior to the post-Katrina "Chocolate City" Nagin) and then with the advent of Katrina and a post Katrina N.O w. a greatly reduced black pop and a white Mayor, D.A. , City Attorney and Chairman of the City Council, it looks like the Museum will survive for the foreseeable future. But, sadly, like rust, "PC never sleeps."

One more bit: If all of the above doesn't illustrate that "elections matter" nothing does. Absent a Republican conservative Governor at just that juncture in history, the 2nd largest collection of Civil War memorabilia in the nation would by now be but a distant memory..